I’m the Washington D.C. bureau chief for Forbes and have worked in the bureau for more than two decades. I've spent much of that time reporting about taxes -- tax policy, tax planning, tax shelters and tax evasion. These days, I also edit the personal finance coverage in Forbes magazine and coordinate outside tax, retirement and personal finance contributors to Forbes.com. You can email me at jnovack@forbes.com and follow me on Twitter @janetnovack.

Back during the long but not-so-long ago economic boom that preceded the Great Recession, the day job couldn’t get no respect. Resented, disdained, taken for granted, it got little thanks for paying the bills until that book contract, national tour, or [fill in the blank] appeared.

What a difference a decade makes. More and more, good (read: with benefits, competitive pay) office jobs are garnering the sort of giddy excitement once reserved for the creative pursuits whose needs they were designed to serve.

“Being into day jobs is really trendy right now,” observes writer Catie Disabato in a recent piece on the blog Full Stop, going on to describe how it took her five years “to come out the other side of a fevered, desperate desire to permanently get rid of the day job and somehow subsist only on writing.” During those years of full-time office work, she also completed a novel—and came to appreciate the value of the job she at first despised. “I know how to write a book while also have a job,” she concludes, almost triumphantly. “I will never have to rely on grants, a university’s funding, a fellowship, or a retreat to fund my writing time.”

It’s not surprising that day jobs are becoming more desirable as jobs—any jobs at all—remain in short supply. While 162,000 jobs were added in July, that was fewer than expected, and the pace of employment “is still not on track to absorb the backlog of unemployed workers anytime soon,” the New York Timesreported this month.

To be sure, the “follow your heart, and the money will follow” message has not disappeared entirely, but increasingly it seems to be losing ground to more pragmatic voices. On the Lifehacker site, Escape from Cubicle Nation author Pam Slim weighed in last month with “How to Start a Side Project Without Quitting Your Day Job.” Among her tips: “Don’t forget that your job is your primary source of income, and should be your top priority.” In a recent Fast Company piece with the title “How To Complete Your Creative Masterpiece Without Quitting Your Day Job,” author Laura Vanderkam made the case that “with 168 hours in a week, it’s quite possible to devote 50 to work, sleep for 56, and fit creative pursuits into the remaining 62 hours,” offering specific examples of people doing just that.

In retrospect, the follow-your-heart lovefest of the boom years can be seen as a reflection—you might say a symptom—of an economy in overdrive. Dream careers, like dream homes, were often fueled by a bubble economy, a fact that has become increasingly clear from any number of real-life cautionary tales. “I have no husband, no children, no real estate, no stocks, no bonds, no investments, no 401(k), no CDs, no IRAs, no emergency fund—I don’t even have a savings account. It’s not that I have not planned for the future; I have not planned for the present,” 1990s It Girl Elizabeth Wurtzel, the bestselling author of Prozac Nation, declaimed last winter in New York magazine. Similarly, Sarah Ban Breathnach, author of the 1995 Oprah-endorsed blockbuster Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy squandered millions on purchases that included Sir Isaac Newton’s “chapel” in England and Marilyn Monroe’s furs, ending up with nothing.

The growing cachet of the day job is part of a trend I’ve taken to calling Follow Your Heart 2.0. In this new iteration, we no longer have a stark dichotomy between pure idealism and practicality. Rather, there’s a recognition that creativity tends to require stability as well as passion. It’s Follow Your Heart remixed for the 21st century.

You can see this formulation at work in The Start-up of You, as LinkedInLinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and co-author Ben Casnocha urge readers to consider three interlocking pieces in making work-related decisions: Assets, aspirations and values, and market realities. Assets are the resources we bring to the table—our talents, education, and skills, as well as our bank accounts. The other two categories are pretty much what they sound like.

Significantly, the authors aren’t telling readers to forget about their dreams. Rather, they’re saying that these dreams exist within a framework of market realities and personal circumstances. Not everyone has the same options. All dreams are not created equal.

For a while the bubble economy obscured these basic truths. For those of us with ample stores of education and social capital, the boom years were forgiving. Risks were not so risky. You could always get a job.

That was certainly my assumption in 1998, when I walked away from a six-figure job practicing law to write a novel. I had never written a novel before and had, what is in retrospect, a laughably (or rather frighteningly) small cushion of savings. I was wildly and improbably lucky: A year later, I had a deal with a major publisher, and for several years I rode that wave.

And then it was over. And then I got a job. This was before the Great Recession, and it didn’t take that long.

It’s hard to imagine pulling that off circa 2013. (And having spent some time unemployed, I speak from experience.) It isn’t always easy to balance creative work with a full-time job. But this is what we call a luxury problem. Those of us with both? We’re lucky.

Amy Gutman is a lawyer and senior writer at Harvard School of Public Health. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Psychology Today, and Salon, among other venues, and she is the author of two suspense novels, both published by Little, Brown. She writes the blog Plan B Nation: Living Creatively in Challenging Times.

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As a techie who left my job back in 2007 to follow my dreams, spent 7 years pursuing my dream job, and am now VERY excited to be growing my day job again – this article really resonates with me on many levels. Good to know I’m not the only one. Thanks!